M.Phil in Social Systems

M.Phil in Social Systems

# SS 601N: Theoretical Orientations in Sociological Analysis.

1. Credits 4
A couple of concerns have been kept in mind while formulating the readings and organizing the classes and class presentations. A focus on key issues of what constitutes sociological analysis and why theoretical concerns are built into it is retained. One seeks to visit the classical theories and their interrogations from the present. Contexts are emphasized as are the combined cumulative and interrogative character of sociological theory. Thus while fundamental grand questions on modernity are retained, the nitty gritty details of micro sociologists are also delved into carefully. The entire course is based on original texts, making the task of reading both challenging and enjoyable. The challenges from feminist rethinking run through the course and not as an add on.

# SS 607N: Methods of Social Sciences.

1. Credits: 4
1. Research Design
• Evolving research questions
• Paradigms and models
• Designing the enquiry
• Kinds of research designs and mixed approaches
• Levels and units of analysis
• Operationalisation of concepts
• Validity of research design

2. Methods and analysis of collected data
• Questionnaires/interview schedules/Quantifiable tools
• Interviews and In-depth interviews
• Narratives
• Documents of life
• Content analysis

3. Issues in the methods of social sciences and the philosophy of social science
• Reflexivity
• Subjectivity and Objectivity
• Agency and structure
• Explanation and understanding
• Universalism and relativism

(b) Optional Courses
# SS 602N: Theories of Social Systems and Social Structure.

1. Not available

# SS 603N: Society, Culture and Personality.

1. Credits: 4
The course is centered on an elaborate reflection on the following themes:

1. Society, culture and personality: Key concepts, and seeing the linkage
2. Psychoanalysis and human nature: Sigmund Freud and beyond
3. Diversity of cultures and human personalities: Insights from cultural anthropology
4. Modernity, classical sociology and human destiny
5. Existentialist reflections on human personality: Absurdity, anguish and meaninglessness
6. National and its national character: Construction and contradiction
7. Rethinking self and Identity: Technological spectacles, globalization and hybridist
8. Culture and personality: Reflections on contemporary trends

# SS 604N: Social System Analysis -Structural and Functional Models.

1. Not available

# SS 605N: Marxist and Dialectical Models.

1. Not available

# SS 606N: Social Systems Analysis - Action, Symbolic and Phenomenological.

1. Not available

# SS 608N: Research Designs and Analysis of Data.

1. Not available

# SS 609N: Interviewing in Social Research.

1. Credits: 4
The interview in certain kinds of fieldwork may be the predominant methodological tool. Where this is the case it produces different kinds of narrative, life histories, oral histories and medical histories or explanations of some performed activity that may require explanation and elaboration by the informants for the fieldworker. The course attempts to examine some of these issues by primarily looking at narratives of illness and healing, where the interview as a mode is often central and the ensuing narrative is often the sole product: a product that cardinally plays upon time, temporality and mode, especially the subjunctive. But we may not, depending upon individual interests and the composition of the class, confine ourselves to the literature on illness and healing. In any case, irrespective of the kind and the setting, since ‘story-telling/story-making', or narrative and the nature of narrative, is the heart of the enterprise, we will examine the theory and practice of narrative in some detail and in the bargain look at some of the ethical issues that may confront the fieldworker when he conducts an interview.

# SS 610N: Scaling Techniques and Factor Analysis.

1. Not available

# SS 611N: Observational Methods and Qualitative Data.

1. Not available

# SS 612N: Projective Methods and Psychological Research.

1. Not available

# SS 613N: Documentary and Content Analysis.

1. Not available

# SS 614N: Analysis of Social Networks and Action-sets.

1. Not available

# SS 615N: Historical Method in Sociology.

1. Credits: 4
This course attempts to understand the relationship between History and Sociology, between past and present along the axes of time, space and memory, with specific focus on urban and gender studies. We will begin with a brief methodological survey of the Annales School in Sociology.
Forms of the Religious Life and Moral Education. What in brief, were Emile Durkheim's contributions in understanding space time and moral density?
We go on to the tradition of Marc Bloch, who through his dialogue with the Durkheimian tradition brought a sharp focus to the analyses of time and society. We will use biography and text in co-relation.
The last part of the lectures will devote itself to the pioneering work of Braudel. Emmanuel Ladourie, Jaques Legoff, Natalie Zemon Davis, Henri Lefbvre to show how historians have borrowed from sociology and contributed methodologically in terms of our analytical understanding of the relationship between past and present.

# SS 616N: Sociology of Modernization and Development.

1. Not available

# SS 617N: Politics and Social Change.

1. Not available

# SS 618N: Professional Systems and Professionalisation.

1. Not available

# SS 619N: Migration, Adaptation and Change - Overseas Indian Communities.

1. Not available

# SS 620N: Youth, Identity and Social Change.

1. Credits: 4
The purpose of the course is to explore the problems of youth and identity in a changing world and to facilitate learning about individual identity (including your own) and its group dimension. Besides the readings, problems for discussion and analysis are drawn from topics presented by members. As a group member, your aim should be to cooperate with others and develop appropriate individual values, group norms, leadership, working procedures and conducive emotional conditions for effective analysis of the issues concerning youth and identity.

# SS 621N: Education and Society.

1. Not available

# SS 622N: Social Structure, Values and Religious Systems.

1. Credits: 4
The aim of this course is to introduce a theoretically grounded but a holistic understanding of religious systems and values in relations to social structure in general and Indian social structure in particular.

# SS 623N: Systems of Family and Kinship.

1. Not available

# SS 624N: Social Structure of Socialist Societies-China, Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia and Cuba.

1. Not available

# SS 625N: Social Mobility, Social Differentiation and Social Change.

1. Not available

# SS 626N: Ethnic Groups and Communities - Problems of Identity and Nation-Building.

1. Course Outline:
1. Theories and Concepts
2. Another Context
3. Globalization, State, Classes and Identities
4. Migration and Identity
5. Questions from India
6. Gender, Nation, Community, Identity

# SS 627N: Study of Social Movements and Revolutions.

1. Not available

# SS 628N: Family Structure, Economic Growth and Modernization.

1. Not available

# SS 629N: Science, Technology and Social Change.

1. Not available

# SS 630N: Textual Analysis in Cultural Context-The Social Anthropology of Civilization.

1. Credits: 4
This course proposes to study selected Texts of Cinema as the symbolic representation of different civilizations. It utilizes different methods, techniques and approaches of Cultural Anthropology and Symbolic Sociology to understand the Construction and Deconstruction of Symbolic text in Civilization Contexts.

# SS 631N: Ethnicity, Identity and Modernity - The case of South and South-East Asia.

1. Not available

# SS 632N: Democracy, Mass-Media and Nation-building.

1. Credits: 4
This course aim at presenting a comparative view of democracy, nation building and mass media in the context of processes of modernization national movements and mass communication. It is structured to provide an understanding of the conceptual and theoretical orientation as well as empirical illustrations of the inter-relationship between democracy, nation building and mass media in the modern world systems.

# SS 633N: Industrialisation and Social Change -Perspectives from the Third World.

1. Not available

# SS 634N: Modes of Symbolic Communication -Belief, Ritual and Art.

1. Not available

# SS 635N: Themes in Gender - Culture and Society.

1. Credits: 4
This course locates gender as a cultural construct and as an organizing principle that pervades social processes by employing comparative perspectives. Readings explore complexities of intersections of gender with sexualities, politics, economy, culture. Key Themes:
a.) Transnational Women's' Movements
b.) Feminist Methodologies
c.) Feminist Ethnographies

# SS 636N: Health, Culture and society